technology

1000 posts: So much to say, so little time!

/ Rainee / 25 Comments

Aviary Photo_131134943141317825 (Copy)

This is my 1000th post!

It has taken me a seven years to get here. It has become part of my day-to-day life. I don’t write all that often now but love to read other bloggers’ adventures and do the Photo Challenge most weeks.

On 8 May I will be leading (as a volunteer) a University of the Third Age class of eight people (seniors) in Blogging for Beginners. I hope to be able to share in eight hours (two hours a week for four weeks) what I have found out over the past seven years.

I have done my homework on the technical side but the actual writing side of things is not so straightforward. I have meandered over a wide range of topics over that time. I guess my blog is really about my  life, thoughts, ideas etc. I have got more into including photos in the past year or so. I love doing that but wonder if I am a bit lazy with the writing!

I would really value any ideas or tips you have for new bloggers that I can pass on to those in my group. Thanks in anticipation 🙂

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I am not making it up …

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about ageI recently had my sixtieth birthday and that means I have done a range of things in those six decades. Sometimes I surprise people when I mention some of those things. I guess we all travel our own journeys and we can never be sure where they will take us. A list of some of my adventures follows:

  • I left home in country Victoria at 17 years old to live in Melbourne and I was a bit into the hippie culture at the time
  • I met my first husband in Melbourne and we married when I was 18
  • My three sons were born in my twenties
  • I lived and worked in several remote communities with high Indigenous populations within Australia including Numbulwar in the Northern Territory, Fitzroy Crossing, Derby, Geraldton and Esperance in Western Australia
  • I was the Newman correspondent for the North West Telegraph when I was living in the Pilbara
  • I didn’t complete high school but went on to gain university entrance as an adult and have since achieved separate qualifications in management and professional writing
  • Twice divorced meant some time as a single mother of my three sons
  • I started studying theology at one stage but didn’t see it through plus I was a Church Warden, Synod representative and Pastoral Assistant in the Anglican Church
  • I was a Shire Councillor and Deputy Shire President with the East Pilbara Shire and ran as a candidate for the State Government in 1993
  • During my time working for the government I spent time in Education and Training, Culture and the Arts, Communities and Disability Services
  • I am really interested in computers and social media and love WordPress 🙂

What I find interesting is the diversity of some of my activities but I guess there is some consistency in the overall story. There are a few adventures held back – I don’t want to give everything away!

Daily Post: Mr Sandman

/ Rainee / 15 Comments

A recent Daily Post Prompt asked, “What kind of sleeper are you? Do you drop off like a stone and awaken refreshed, or do you need pitch black and silence to drift off to dream?”

So, what kind of sleeper am I? NOT GOOD!

I am nearing the end of Week 1 of a four-week trial in using some really interesting equipment to help me to sleep better at night. Teddy offered to model the two masks for me for this blog today :-). It is for the relief of sleep apnoea.

You can click on the link HERE if you would like to read more about it. I am feeling much better already 🙂

To Sleep or Not to Sleep …

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Today, or I should say, tonight, I am having a sleep study.

I am not a good sleeper and have been known to SNORE (so I am told :-)) THRASH about and GASP in my sleep. I am required to go to Sleep and Snore Solutions and get wired up (see below) and then go home and sleep!  I return to get unwired tomorrow. Should be interesting 🙂

Sleep study 1

O sleep, O gentle sleep, nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, that thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, and steep my senses in forgetfulness.
William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II, Act III, sc. 1
sleep study 2

I hate and love learning

/ Rainee / 7 Comments

Unique POV 001I am under pressure at the moment to complete five tasks for the second assignment in my unit of study – Production, Editing and Design. I have gone past the point of ‘this is really interesting’ to now feeling ‘am I going to live through this process?’

I received my results this morning from the first assignment and I passed moderately well – a big relief. I didn’t say I did well – but I was happy enough with the outcome.

This is a very technical unit and it is pushing me beyond my limits, however, today I learned so much – that I never would have otherwise. Why does it have to be so painful in the process?

The main part of the assignment is due on 21 October. I hope to send it off this Friday to lessen the torture. The rest is due on 4 November. We are going away for a couple of days after that to celebrate/recover my sanity.

If you have any study tips or suggestions for surviving the pressure, I would love to hear them.

cheers

Lorraine

DP Challenge: Procrastination

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IMG_0913

Recently while talking to some people I had just met, I realised how often my lifestyle decisions are based on doing things online. I met my husband online and I am a member of Weight Watchers online. I order my groceries online and buy my books the same way. I have personal Facebook page and business Facebook page plus I have this blog and another business blog. I do online research and read the news and weather online. I am also studying online.

How does this relate to today’s topic?

Well I need to get out into the community and do some face to face promotion and networking to help bring in some work. I seem to find a hundred reasons why I can’t do that. I am so much more comfortable in an online environment but I realise that good old networking seems to be the way to generate more work. Remember the saying, ‘it is not what you know but who you know’.

OK – here and now I will make a commitment for the coming week to visit two businesses with my flyer and business card and see if that breaks the ice for me :-).

cheers

Lorraine

Related articles

Social networking blunders

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This is icon for social networking website. Th...

This is icon for social networking website. This is part of Open Icon Library’s webpage icon package. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I love social networking however I suspect some of my friends and email contacts may be a little “over” getting information from me. I recently set up a website (through WordPress) for my business and last week I set up a Facebook page as well. I am also active on LinkedIn and that is where the problem started.

LinkedIn opened up with my email address and asked for my password and I dutifully supplied it without thinking. What happened next is regrettable! All my email contacts received a message asking them to link up with me. Many of my contacts don’t have any knowledge of LinkedIn and don’t want to either. LinkedIn seemed to send emails to people who weren’t in my contact list but are people I email on a regular basis.

My first reaction was to send an email out to everyone to apologize for the influx of unwanted mail. Then I realised I would be adding insult to the injury. Sometimes these mediums can be very UN-sociable. I think my problem is that I am too keen and don’t always consider the implications of pressing a button or two. Hopefully I am learning from experience as I would like to keep in touch with my friends and colleagues.

And, if you haven’t seen my Facebook page and my website, the addresses are below. I think I will leave LinkedIn OUT on this occasion 🙂

cheers

Lorraine

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/naturalistebusinesswritingsolutionswa

Web – http://www.businesswritingsolutionswa.wordpress.com

Do you know what you want to do when you grow up?

/ Rainee / 5 Comments

IMG_0044A group of celebrities on a recent TV program seemed to clearly know their vocation. One of them said, “I saw someone do ‘stand-up’ comedy and at that moment I knew that it was for me”. Another one always knew they would be a journalist and yet another, an actor. It got me reflecting on my choices and if there had been any sense of vocation from a  young age. The short answer is NO! I did have some false starts though, or trial runs…

  1. In high school I took all the right subjects to enable me to become a nurse. I nearly went down that path as I was accepted into two training hospitals in Melbourne. I am so pleased I didn’t go through with it. I think nursing is a very worthy and noble profession but I believe I wasn’t cut out for it. One of the main reasons I didn’t accept the offers was the idea of doing shift work. That had no appeal.
  2. Retail – this was more about paying the bills and enabling me to stay in the City and not return home to Mum and Dad and admit failure at achieving independence. I was reasonably good at sales but dealing with the public day in and day out was pretty challenging.
  3. Teaching English as a Second Language – now this was something that I really enjoyed. I had no training but used my knowledge of language plus some intuition and had some good outcomes.
  4. Office work – again I was self-taught as I didn’t do any commercial subjects at school. Administration is much more attractive with the advance of computers and the latest software but it doesn’t really excite me at all!
  5. A good government job came along in 1993. My skills and knowledge were a good match with the job description but it was really the pay and conditions that kept me in that job for 17 years. I worked in the employment and training field in regional areas of Western Australia.
  6. That brings me up to 2010 when I resigned from the State Government and commenced a journey of self-employment. My work today requires good writing skills, good computer literacy and good customer relations.

Perhaps the idea of a job for life or a vocation is not as relevant today. We need to be flexible and keep learning and adapting to support our relevance and our skills. When I was working in employment and training we used to tell people that most of the jobs of the future have not been invented yet due to the pace of change due to technology and globalisation. I still think that is true today.

So, did you have an “aha!” moment when you realised what you wanted to do, or has it just evolved over the years?

Cheers

Lorraine

PS I get a lot of pleasure out of my blog – not just the writing but the technology in putting it all together. I probably enjoy that more than I have ever enjoyed the workplace!

Today’s blog isn’t really a blog – it is a test of my IT skills :-)

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The Pocosin cabin along the trail in Shenandoa...

The Pocosin cabin along the trail in Shenandoah National Park (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today I want to do a blog mainly so I can test that everything is working as it should be.

I spent a couple of hours on the computer and I could get two out three things working but couldn’t manage to pull off all three. Hopefully I have achieved victory after changing my browser yet again – this time to Mozilla Firefox.

I have mentioned my son before – he is doing the Appalachian Trail. If anyone is interested in having a look at his blog it is at www.neanderjoel.wordpress.com

He seems to be having a great time – he commented that Americans are just like us (Australians) except they talk funny! I enjoyed that.

cheers for now

Lorraine